Creative catch up

I seem to have been full on since returning from my weekend at Wanaka. The bookmaking class was excellet with lots done. I have done a collage of work from my own books on the upper LH corner and the rest are other students (who were happy for me to take photos). It was great to get so much done in the two days but we had to work hard to achieve so much. I made two bound journals (red and blue), a photo album (purple), and an oriental book in a box (dyed indigo and print). I was pleased to be able to work with fabric for these and there was one lady in our class who had glued beads onto the front of her photo album and another who inset some embroidery so I know that I can take this idea further.



Back home and off to printmaking class - I can't remember what the tutor called this technique for the two prints but I think of them as one being a positive and one a negative block. The blue block is the "reduction" block. I can carve more design into it and print with another colour onto the blue print. I can do this as many times as I want with as many colours. When I have finished I then use the other block with a dark colour and print over everything to hide the white lines from the first print and it will also give more definition to the final print. This is as far as I got and I hope to do more next week perhaps (we might be doing screen printing next week though).



I am really enjoying the woodcarved blocks - I think I have already said that I am doing this class to see what I can get from it to be able to make my own blocks to use for printing on fabric.
The tutor knows my intentions and has been very encouraging and I am starting to feel more comfortable with doing the carving. I can see that my blocks are going to have a very basic folk art (or is it "my six year old could do that") style.

Just to finish off here is a view from my motel at Wanaka - it doesn't really show the true glory of the mountains as it was still quite dark when I took the photo and I had to do a few adjustments to it. When I try to describe the mountains I think in details of fabric and embroidery stitches for textures. Truly glorious.